THERE were moments of magic and moments of mischief. Times when he seemed the international superstar and times he seemed more like the smutty club comic.

This was Robbie Williams at his intoxicating, infuriating best.

''You know what you've done'', he chastised the crowd of more than 45,000 at Old Trafford. ''You've gone and made me the biggest pop star on the planet.''

Robbie stepped out to Let Me Entertain You, the crowd bouncing in unison beneath the last rays of the sun.

Girls in skimpy vests clambered onto partners' shoulders and mobile phones were held aloft to put this bit of history on the answering machine, or just taunt pals at home who hadn't got a ticket.

It was on into Let Love Be Your Energy, Robbie bounding around the stage, dressed all in black, but with a blond skunk stripe dyed in his dark hair, like a Mohican cut.

He stepped down from the stage to serenade the crush at the front with Old Before I Die, then gave us Better Man, his hymn to self-improvement.

As the grinding guitars of Forever Texas struck up, the Loaded lad in Robbie rose to the surface.

He implored the girls to show their assets and many did, to be picked out by the TV cameras and flashed across the giant video screens.

During No Regrets flames erupted all around the stage, presumably to the bewilderment of passengers on the charter flights passing overhead, going to and from Ringway.

Then the gloating began.

His punk version of Take That's Back For Good came dedicated cruelly to: Mark Owen, Howard Donald, Gary Barlow and the other fellow - I'm not sure what his name is.''

Mischievous Robbie even had a dig at the M.E.N., tearing up a copy of Friday's paper in retaliation for alleged criticism of his earlier career. Nowadays Robbie doesn't have to worry about bad reviews, and from here on in it was crowd-pleasers all the way.

A disembodied Kylie Minogue duetted on Kids courtesy of the video screens.

She's The One melted a few hearts, then Millennium segued, bizarrely, into Limp Bizkit's Rollin. As is now his custom, he had the crowd sing Angels for him and a grand chorus they made.

Rock DJ was vaudeville-meets-stadium rock, followed by his version of Queen's We Are The Champions.

milestone

This weekend's concerts mark a music milestone in Manchester. For sheer numbers of tickets sold, Robbie's three-night stint before almost 150,000 adoring fans is surely a record.

Robbie is impossible to dislike, yet difficult to know. He is, perhaps, the only performer alive who can communicate with 45,000 people in the way most of us chat in the pub.

The only man, too, who would take the sublime strings of I Will Survive and inject them with acid humour as he does to create his song Supreme. A very British approach, that.

He is by turns self-deprecating and arrogant - telling us what a superstar he is, but at the same time debunking his own myth.

Perhaps there is only one word for someone so charismatic and yet so contrary: Genius.